


reclamation day

by theexistentialqueer



Category: Old Kingdom - Garth Nix
Genre: Cunnilingus, F/M, No Beta, PWP, Porn Without Plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-26
Updated: 2018-09-26
Packaged: 2019-07-17 18:32:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16101359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theexistentialqueer/pseuds/theexistentialqueer
Summary: The day finally comes when Sabriel has banished all of the Dead from Belisaere.





	reclamation day

**Author's Note:**

> I write porn and I can't even write gay porn because I love these two fucks so much and I hate myself.

A great hue and cry goes up across the city the day the last of the dead are banished from Belisaere, the city's ancient wards restored. The King proclaims a holiday, ten days hence, and the city unfurls banners and makes garlands of spring flowers that droop and sigh in the wind; women pull out their best dresses in bright sky blues and cherries, men their finest tunics of damask and velvet. The newly resettled palace organizes a hasty, last-minute sort of banquet in honor of the newly crowned Abhorsen Queen.

Sabriel, for her part, trudges back to the palace in a dull slump, relying more on the heavy presence of Royal Guard on either side of her to alert her to enemies than on her own senses. When they reach the palace, she seems to black out: at least, she has no memory of climbing the several staircases between the sally port she sidled through up to the royal apartments, furnished in red and gold with accents of blue and silver. Sabriel reaches her bedroom and falls blissfully, stomach-first, onto the bed.

Touchstone finds her there less than half an hour later, waylaid by minor nobles and guildsheads. When he sees his wife sprawled on the bed, bell bandolier uncomfortably pinioned between herself and the mattress, he closes the doors quietly and tiptoes the rest of the way in.

" _I an ear oo_ ," Sabriel declares, her voice muffled by the silk expanse of the comforter. She spits it out, turns her head to the side, and says again, "I can hear you."

Touchstone stops his creeping and resumes a slow, measured gait, approaching his wife slowly--not like an animal so much as a very exhausted person who has spent her entire day ensconced in sorcery and bellcraft. Sometimes when Sabriel returns from her most strident dangers, she is irritable as well as tired, and prone to verbal biting. When he reaches the bed unscathed, he sinks down onto the mattress near her head, and gently reaches out and brushes her hair back behind her ear. It's grown out slightly, despite Sabriel's stubborn efforts to keep her fashionable Ancelstierran bob. A sign of Sabriel's distraction by more pressing worries. It's at a sort of mid-length now, not quite even with her chin, but not yet reaching her shoulders either.

He likes her with longer hair, likes the way it slides through his fingers, even when it's oily with a day's hard labor like it is now, but he never says so. He likes Sabriel's independent spirit more.

"They're gone," Touchstone says hesitantly. "Maybe, now, a brief rest?"

Sabriel laughs into the silk comforter. "A _rest_. Yes, with dead still around Sindle, and Yanyl, and Chasel. With broken Charter Stones at Hafmet, Ganel, and Edge--Charter Stones you must repair, my love. I see no rest in the immediate future. Indeed, I dream of rest the way people dream of unicorns. It's a fable for simpler folk."

Touchstone smiles in response, his fingers catching on a particularly nasty knot, clotted with blood. He brings in his left hand as well and his right and begins gently easing the strands apart, wincing in sympathy whenever Sabriel hisses at a strong tug.

"Some Dead thing's living puppet, bleeding from the wounds the Dead thing rent in his skin," Sabriel says, closing her eyes to enjoy his ministrations. "He got in past my blade. Damed made quick work of him, but I--I regret not being able to save him, even though he was a fool who subjected himself willingly to the Dead's rule and not an unwilling victim of one of the Lesser Dead like a Mordaut. Ohhhhhh, no, right there, I've had an _awful_ itch there all day."

Touchstone smiles and returns to the spot at the base of her skull, right where her head meets the back of her neck, where her helmet would have chafed against her skin. Already he has an idea for how to help her. "I know it was hard, but you did great work, My Queen," he says, his voice going low and deep. Sabriel rolls over suddenly, tearing several strands of hair between his fingers, to look at him with eyes bright with feverish exhaustion, a look of wry amusement on her exhausted face.

"Touchstone," she says sternly, her head craned painfully up to look at him, "I'm too tired for this."

"Too tired for what?" Touchstone asks innocently, reaching to undo the straps of her bell bandolier. "I think a rest is just what you need."

"What you have in mind is not _rest_."

"What I have in mind is an excellent prelude to rest."

"Touchstone," Sabriel grounds out, amusement and affection warring with irritation in her heart, "I don't know if I'm even capable of removing my own clothes. Let alone yours."

Touchstone gives her a wicked grin. "That's simple. I'll remove them for you. And mine need not even be touched."

Something warm has worked it's way into Sabriel now, something quite separate from the banked fire burning in the bedroom hearth, the Charter spells for warmth thick in the air, or the warm presence of Touchstone beside her. It's something that almost reminds her that she's only nineteen, and a girl in love, for all that she's Abhorsen, and a wife, and Queen.

"You're doing _all_  of the work," Sabriel warns him, letting her head thump back down onto the mattress. The silk is smooth and cool on her cheek, not even scratchy with how fine the embroidery is. A gift from the weaver's guild to the King.

"You've done all the work these last few weeks," Touchstone says, and his voice is at its deepest. She feels the music in every sound, every voice, and that note in Touchstone's makes something heavy fall into the pit of her stomach, makes her feel warm between her legs. "Let me do something for you now."

He reaches behind her back and shoulders to pull her into a sitting position, working her surcoat up her legs with gentle tugs as he does so. She lets herself rest bonelessly against his body, her head cradled between his head and his shoulder, at the crook of his neck. She can feel the heat rolling off him, and it makes her feel safe. She has to shift the weight of her hips at the gentle signaled press of his hands on her hips, but finds she doesn't mind. He's not doing _all_  the work then--but most of it.

When he gets the surcoat above her hips, he gently lifts her arms and peels it over her head. It passes with the musty smell of sweat and dirt and the reek of Dead things. Sabriel wrinkles her nose.

"I wonder how you can bear touching me, when I come home smelling like that," she says.

"I am lucky to touch you at all," Touchstone says, "especially when you come home smelling like that, because I know how easily I could have lost you."

Sabriel's heart thuds heavily in her chest.

Next comes her armored coat, which necessitates Touchstone pulling her into a standing embrace, his arms ensconced around her, bearing her weight as easily as a kitten--or as Mogget, Sabriel thinks, a little deliriously. She hopes she doesn't pass out in the middle from exhaustion. That would be embarrassing.

"What was that?" Touchstone asks.

Sabriel hadn't realized she'd spoken aloud. "I hope I don't pass out," she repeats, giving him a tired smile.

"Darling," Touchstone says, a broad grin on his face as he gently peels her gethre armor from her body, "I would take it as a compliment."

"Not if I'm passing out because I'm dead tired," Sabriel snorts.

Touchstone laughs.

Her tunic comes next, but she's seated gratefully back on the bed by then, and then her undershirt, and her leggings--for this she falls back onto the bed in a dead, muddled heap--and then up again for her undershirt and her breast wraps.

Touchstone kisses her then, one hand gently resting on her breast, the brush of his callouses achingly familiar, and they make that thing in Sabriel quietly stir more. "You can still say no," he says, his other arm wrapped around her back. "You can always say no."

"I'm cold," Sabriel says petulantly in response. "That's your fault. You don't have to spend hours of your life slogging through the bitter waters of Death. I insist on being warm."

Touchstone's mouth is at her throat, sucking gently, and his chuckle sends a vibration rolling through her ribcage. "As My Queen commands."

Sabriel lets herself fall out of his arms and back onto the bed, follows his gentle nudges so that she's situated further back on the vast deep bed, and Touchstone is settled comfortably between her legs. He hooks his fingers through the band of her drawers and draws them slowly down.

She's wet and slick already--not as much as she would be if she were alert and eager, but enough to show she wants this absolution he's offering--and Touchstone wonders at the sight of her, the pink folds of her vulva, the dark curls of her hair. He's seen it before--this isn't the first time they've done this, nor will it be the last, because the first time they'd tried Touchstone had found Sabriel more than a very enthusiastic participant. But it makes him wonder all the same. He's heard men, men of the Guard he served with, of his mother's soldiers, talk about women in less than respectful terms, about how they looked under their protective layers of clothes and how ugly it was. 

Nothing about Sabriel is ugly. Every pale curve of her, every dark strand of hair, every angle of her bones--her rich dark brown eyes, so dark they're almost black, her height, so much taller than most women--and most men--the straightness of her spine, the smooth expanse of her belly, the contrast between her pale skin and the bright pink areola of her breast.

Touchstone leans forward and licks his tongue up her slick entrance, savoring the taste of her. Sabriel shudders against him, her body shifting from limpness to tenseness, her legs rising up like mountains.

"Oh," Sabriel says pleadingly in her tired, tired voice. "Oh, please."

Touchstone's mother raised him to be a gentleman, to listen to a lady's pleas. He must comply. He presses forward with another long lick, and then another, pressing his tongue forward between the folds of her vulva, sucking on one side and then the other. Sabriel tenses under him, his hand on her hip, and gasps. That's a promising sign, especially as Touchstone continues and her breath wheezes out, becoming quiet hisses, and then quiet whines.

"Touchstone--" Sabriel pleads. "Touchstone, please, please--"

Touchstone seeks her clit then, and sucks it against his teeth. Her reaction is electric: Sabriel jolts like a startled calf, her whole body seizing, and her hand comes down to find his on his hip. Her grip is frighteningly tight, all of her exhaustion erased.

"If you stop now," she warns, her eyes like fire.

Touchstone kisses the center of her heat and pulls away just long enough to promise, "I won't stop now."

He dives back in, sucking at her clit, licking at the lips of her vulva. The tension in Sabriel grows like a harpsichord, like the sound of her bells, each building into the last. He thinks, not for the first time and not for the last, that Sabriel is like Saraneth, the pull she has over him. He loves that pull. He embraces that pull. He seeks her pleasure because she saved him.

Sabriel cries out and throws out her other hand to pull at his hair, and that feeling is one that drives Touchstone wild. He tugs away to gasp in pleasure, momentarily distracted by the feeling of his cock rubbing against the bedding through the layers of his clothing, then feels that tug again and returns to Sabriel with wild vigor. She's worked so hard. So hard. The city is free of the dead, and it's all because of her, because of this vivid, beautiful, living woman, pale as death but more alive than anyone he's ever known--

Sabriel cries out again, louder than before, her voice giving way to a wave of wails and moans.  Touchstone feels her trembling against him, not erratic now but controlled by the waves of her orgasm, feels her trembling slower and slower until she's tangled with him as a pair of panting, sweating, breathing creatures.

"Are you all right?" Touchstone asks. It's always the first thing he asks after they couple. She's so strong, and he shouldn't be afraid of hurting her, and he isn't, mostly, but it still matters to him. To know she's _all right_.

Sabriel flutters a hand in response, breathing heavily, then reverses the motion of her hand to gesture towards herself instead of away. "Get up here, you silly man."

With some effort, because it's so _comfortable_ lying here between her legs, the warmth of her at his face and at his sides such a comfort, Touchstone drags himself up and over her until he's laying at her right side.

"I think I can sleep now," Sabriel says, her eyes crinkling up in amusement, though already she looks ready to close her eyes to the bliss of dreams. Or what Touchstone hopes is the bliss of dreams, because nightmares still plague them both.

"Good," Touchstone says, and kisses her on her nose. Sabriel's nose scrunches up in response, and she looks up at him, a look that says she's not a baby and shouldn't be treated like one.

"When I w-w-way......When I wake up," Sabriel stutters, and yawns hugely. "When I wake up, I'm paying back the favor."

"Milady," Touchstone says, now with a tone of amusement because he knows how it annoys her, and if she wasn't so exhausted she would hit his chest, "by all means, please do."

Sabriel just laughs sleepily and falls into dreamless slumber.


End file.
